


The Rift in the Lute

by Jocondite (jocondite)



Category: Bandom, Panic At The Disco
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-21
Updated: 2007-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-21 14:42:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/226345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jocondite/pseuds/Jocondite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Independent coffeehouse AU, feat. Panic! At The Disco, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, The Hush Sound, The Academy Is..., Cobra Starship and a Very Small Dog.</p><p>Ryan is a bitter hipster jerk and a terrible barista, Brendon is the ill-advised hook up that just won't go away, and The Starbucks Up The Street is the Enemy, possessed of sinuous, serpentine wiles and insidious prowess. No quarter must be given, and no quarter shall, at least on Ryan's watch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Rift in the Lute

**Author's Note:**

  * For [softlyforgotten](https://archiveofourown.org/users/softlyforgotten/gifts).



When his alarm goes off, Ryan thinks very, very seriously about skipping his classes and calling in sick to work. Utterly, direly, _impossibly_ seriously. He even lies in bed for a minute or two with his eyes still sealed shut, carefully sketching this fantasy out; imagining it, every sweet second of the rakish dissipation and general slothfulness which he really fucking deserves.

His alarm continues to sound, a dull blaring throb which immediately finds resonance somewhere around his temples. He's about to roll over and turn it off – he really is – when someone jabs him in the shoulder and says, far too loudly, "Um, dude, your alarm's going off. Just, F-Y-I."

"Yeah, I noticed," Ryan mutters. He doesn't turn off the alarm, and after a second, the someone leans over him and silences it.

Which is really too much, all things considered. If you're ill-mannered enough to goddamn _hang around_ in the morning after a one-night stand, instead of doing the decent, non-embarrassing thing and getting the fuck out afterwards, or at least sneaking out sometime in the early dawn, you really shouldn't be manhandling and making free with one's possessions. Ryan feels very strongly about this.

"That's my clock," he says, cracking open one eye. "Don't touch my clock."

The guy from last night – he can remember picking him up, of course, it's not like he was on a bender or anything, he just hadn't expected him to be _still here_ – blinks back at him. His face is way too close, inches away, and Ryan can't focus on him properly. Way, way, too close. Granted, it's only a twin bed, but he's not looking to get laid anymore and this guy is all up in his space, pressed against his side, legs still curled round his. Seriously, what.

"Sorry?"

"Whatever." He's being rude, maybe, but – and a squint at the clock verifies this – he's cutting it close if he's going to haul ass and make it for his morning shift, and he has three classes this afternoon, and seriously, why is this guy _still in his bed_? Does he not know how these things work?

The guy – Brandon? Ben? Brent? – grimaces comically at him, mouth pursing. It's a pretty mouth. Ryan notes distantly that his eyes are very dark and almost liquid, and, if he remembers correctly, his hair looks okay when it's brushed and smoothed down and not standing up all over his head in licks and hillocks hither and yon.

"Whatever," he says, and finally throws first one leg and then the other over the side of the bed. Brian (Bruce?) eyes him appreciatively as he snatches up his jeans from the floor. Ryan doesn't have time for this shit.

"You can use the shower after I'm done," he calls out over his shoulder. "Pull the front door shut behind you when you go, it locks. Don't steal any of my stuff."

"Hey," the guy says, sounding wounded. "I wouldn't do that."

"Sure, whatever."

Ryan's trying to find a clean, decent-looking shirt (she might come into the coffeehouse today, you never know) when the guy – Bret? – gets out of bed, too, and starts gathering up his own clothing. He pushes his disastrous hair out of his eyes and smiles up at Ryan as he does it, and okay, he's hot, there was a reason Ryan took him home, _eyeshandshipsmouth._

"So," the guy says, carefully casual, "what's your number? We could reprise this at some point, maybe. Maybe hang out."

"Sure," Ryan says, rolling his eyes. He finds a clean shirt at last; it's Spencer's, but what's Spencer's is Ryan's, at this point. Mostly. They're roommates; they're childhood friends; they're practically _brothers._

Spencer might not entirely agree with this logic, but that's immaterial at this current juncture. Besides, Spencer's not here. His bed hasn't been slept in, and Ryan has no idea where he is. His absence was convenient for Ryan, but he does vaguely hope that he's not lying under a bridge or across a train track somewhere.

"No, really," the guy presses, and he even sounds sincere. He is so fucking clueless.

"Maybe I'll see you around," Ryan says insincerely; he checks out the guy for the last time, the pale skin being swallowed up as he struggles into his jeans. It's not like it's a bad view or anything, definitely not, but he just doesn't have the _time_ , and he heads into the shower before the guy can ask him for his number again.

-

He's barely even ten minutes late for his shift, but Dusty raises her arched eyebrows at him, hand on her hip, and says "What was it this time, Ross? Lost key? Runaway train? Tragic unavoidable hold-up of your local 7-11 by a hirsute Polack?"

"Close," he agrees, deadpan, his face perfectly blank. "I passed a burning apartment building on my way in. Flames belching everywhere, licking up to the roof. I saved four crying orphans from the furnace. Then I went back in and heroically rescued the family cat and her litter of tiny, day-old, close-eyed kittens."

Katie tips back her head and laughs in a silvery peal, almost unsettling the little hat tilted saucily down over one dark eye. Dusty's mouth twitches an infinitesimal fraction under her heavy make-up. She nods in his direction in what you could probably take as defeat, or grudging respect, but Ryan's too smart to let his guard down. Redheads are historically dangerous. Elizabeth the First, Judith smiting Holofernes, _Boudicca_. Dusty's hair might be dyed a drabber shade of chestnut right this second, but it's red in the sunlight, and he knows the truth. Suspects, whatever. The shoe fits.

"Nice one, Ross," she says, taking off her scarlet apron and handing it to him. "I've got things to attend to this morning, so you and Katie are watching the store yourselves until Smith gets here, okay?"

Ryan stops in the act of tying the apron around his waist, leaving it hanging loose from his neck. "Spencer's not here?"

Dusty looks pointedly around the coffeehouse. Her gaze takes in the empty tables, a couple of students hovering at the end of the counter for their orders, Katie dark-eyed and grinning behind the register (the opalescent corset she's wearing with her jeans shouldn't work, but somehow it does); the palpable lack of any sign of Spencer.

"I thought maybe he was in back," Ryan mutters, but before he can say anything more, the door opens with a faint chime and a chill winter's breeze. He pastes on a welcoming smile, but it's not a proper customer. Sometimes he doesn't know why he bothers. It's only Greta, some boy trailing in her wake and probably carrying her books for her.

"Morning, compadres!" she calls out cheerfully, and Ryan thinks bitter thoughts about feminine conspiracies and the cunning Greta must hide behind her sweet smile and golden eyelashes that lets her weasel her way out of Monday morning shifts. Greta's never pencilled in for the seven to twelve, and Ryan feels, deep in his very bones, the unfairness of this.

"What do you want, honey?" Katie asks her, smiling. Katie and Greta and Dusty go to yoga together after their shifts, sometimes, and apparently Katie drags Greta along to bellydancing classes; Ryan never knows whether he should believe this or not, but Greta gets vague and mysterious about it - so _possibly_ , possibly, it's another scrap of evidence of the feminine power bloc that's totally going on at Al-Andalus.

Al-Andalus is the name painted in swirls and curlicues on the sign outside, but like most people, Ryan tends to think of it as Dusty-and-Katie-Kay's, or even just as Dusty's. (Dusty's name is Erin, on the dotted line, but this is always conveniently forgotten; Ryan likes to think of Al-Andalus's many names, stacked one inside the other like concentric circles, a succession of puzzle-boxes).

It sells exceptionally good espresso, in handy proximity to the college campus, with good background music and gingerbread cookies and cupcakes, and seriously, half the clientele comes in for the primary purpose of talking (debating) music with the staff, or for the treat of genuine, unfeigned barista sarcasm.

The latter type of customer (Ryan's not quite sure whether to mentally label them as masochists, or as laudably detached post-modernists) never quite knows what to do when Greta or Katie serve them; Greta can summon up some impressive needling and irony when she needs it, but her default customer-service setting is sweet, polite and helpful.

Katie actually seems to genuinely be just that nice, if occasionally wry, and Ryan doesn't quite know what to do with that, nor how she ended up as half-owner of a coffeehouse famed for its bitter baristas and its decidedly less bitter, perfectly roasted beans. Patrons either adore her or eye her warily, like they can't believe that she's that actually that sweet, and might bite them if they look at her funny.

"Look like the innocent flower but be the serpent under't," Ryan mumbles, and Katie looks up and smiles vaguely in his direction.

"Vanilla latte to go, please," Greta says, and Ryan rolls his eyes as Dusty and Katie try to give it to her on the house ("You're one of us, you know we can't take your money").

" _Greta_ ," he says sadly. "Seriously, if you want to inflict that kind of sugary torture on decent qavah, you should go to the fucking Starbucks and just have done with it. Cease this death-of-a-thousand-cuts shit."

"I saw you making yourself a double hazelnut mocha on your break the other day," Greta says, "don't even start with me, Ryan Ross." She puts her elbows on the counter and lifts herself up enough to lean over and kiss his cheek, _hello_.

Ryan catches the corner of her mouth with his own, just to annoy the guy standing silently behind her, holding a tottering stack of books that have things like _Psychoanalytical Theory and Virginia Woolf_ and _A Wildean Revolution_ scrawled along their thick spines.

The guy orders an espresso to go, and Ryan turns away in disgust and reluctant admiration – he can't even mock that, dammit - and ministers to the press.

"Fuck, I have to go," Dusty says suddenly, looking up at the painted clock on the wall, half its lettering – one through six – in Roman numerals in some ornate Gothic script, the other half – seven through twelve – in modern, curly numerals, _7-8-9-10-11-12._ Ryan is unfortunately fond of their bipolar clock. "Greta, you're on at midday, see you then."

She and Greta air-kiss as they pass, and Ryan leans over and grabs Dusty's arm before she can get too far away.

"Hey, wait. Has she been in yet?"

Dusty sighs, and in choral echo, Katie and Greta sigh too. "No, Ryan," Dusty says. "She hasn't been in yet. Now unhand me, I'm going to be late. And it's only one free coffee an hour, Ryan, please remember that."

"You need to stop the stalking," Greta says confidentially when Ryan's putting the lid on her latte. "It's getting you nowhere, and, while I hate to destroy the gossamer fabric of your dreams, it's just never going to happen with her, my precious darling." She strokes his hair, and Ryan bats her hand away.

"Fuck you." He pushes the coffee across at her (it slops a little against the slit), and she grimaces in half-rueful apology. "Aren't you going to introduce us to your boytoy?"

The boytoy tightens his grip on the stack of books, looking awkward and possibly a little amused.

"I'm sorry, Ryan was raised by kind-hearted wolves," Greta tells him in a sweet, conversational tone. "It was very tragic and I'm afraid he still doesn't know how to behave in polite society sometimes."

"You should see me with a knife and fork," Ryan agrees, deadpan. "Tragic. Also, I haven't had my first coffee yet."

The guy looks from Ryan to Greta and then back again, and then he laughs. "How are you with chopsticks?"

Greta looks doleful. "You can't even imagine the carnage."

Ryan might have to give the boytoy a pass, since he possesses both a sense of humour and good taste in coffee. Behind the books, he's even kind of hot, dark hair and dark eyes and a gorgeous mouth, not that that's Ryan's type or anything. He pointedly doesn't think about the boy in his bed this morning, or how that boy was in bed last night.

"This is Chris," Greta says, and the look she gives Ryan says _hands off_ , the sweetest and most fleeting and yet most utterly unmistakeable of looks.

"My heart is already promised elsewhere," Ryan protests, while Chris looks back and forth between them again. He has _very pretty_ dark eyes.

"Mmmph," Greta says, faintly disapproving, and sweeps out.

-

Spencer sweeps in not long after. He is, according to the clock, precisely thirty-seven minutes late.

"You're late," Ryan says gleefully. "Late, late, _late_." As an afterthought, he adds, "I'm glad you're not dead under a bridge somewhere."

"Hey, Spencer," Katie says, smiling. "Apron's on the hook, hurry up, we've got six orders to go and Ryan and I are only getting through them so fast."

"...That's so grotesquely unfair," Ryan complains. "I was only ten – five, even, _five_ minutes late to work, and I get yelled at, but does Spencer get scolded? No, Spencer doesn't."

"Spencer doesn't make a habit of being late, though," Katie says.

"Spencer texted to say that he'd be late," Spencer says. "Also, Spencer promised to cover part of the lunch shift, too."

"Spencer is a brownnosing asslicking traitor who talks pompously about himself in the third person," Ryan grumbles. "Also, dude, where the fuck were you? I might have been worried."

"I'm only half an hour late," Spencer says calmly, doing sinister things to the hot milk frother which make it hiss contentedly. "I had to go home and change my clothes before coming in."

"Yeah, no," Ryan says, sprinkling cinnamon perfunctorily over a chai latte and shoving it at a customer (one of the interminable Alexes. He can never keep them straight.) "No, it's not this morning I'm talking about, I'm talking about last _night."_

Spencer doesn't say anything, unusually reticent for once; just hands a pig-tailed girl her mocha with a tight, token smile.

"You got laid," Ryan smirks. "You got laid, you totally did –"

"Excuse me, can I have a decaf cappuccino in venti?"

Ryan stops mid-inquisition and turns slowly around, eyes gone narrow. "What?"

The idiot customer snaps his gum and says, louder and slower, like he thinks Ryan might be somehow impaired; "A venti. Decaf. Cappuccino."

Katie makes a small despairing sound, and Spencer grins and slouches against the bench, watching.

"Can you read?" Ryan asks pleasantly.

The guy blinks and shakes his head a little, silky brown hair brushing against his shoulders. ( _Poseur_ , Ryan thinks, not a little put out by his long shining locks and the fact that he just might be wearing smaller, tighter jeans than Ryan himself. Is he taller than him? Fuck). "Yeah, what? Why?"

"He means, can you read the sign over the door," Spencer translates with another sharp smile. "It's printed across our aprons, too, if you need a better look."

"Al-Andalus," the customer reads, with an audible suck on his gum. He continues to look nonplussed and somewhat put out.

"Yes," Ryan concurs, charmingly agreeable, if maybe a little flat. "Al-Andalus. Not Starbucks. No ventis here."

"You knew what I _meant_ ," the guy gripes, and when he collects his coffee, he shoots them all a dark glance and flounces – actually, positively, fucking _flounces_ – out.

"Was that really necessary?" Katie asks. "You could've just given him an extra-large without saying anything."

Spencer and Ryan trade glances.

"Pretty much."

"Yeah."

"We have to stop the rot," Ryan explains. "You let _them_ take an inch, and the next thing you know, Al-Andalus will be a boarded up shell while _they_ flourish in our despite. Also, Dusty gave me strict instructions."

Spencer nods. "We have to fight the good fight. Although, dude, I hate to say it, but it'd probably work better if we didn't piss off the prospective customers so much that they fucked off up the street to Starbucks in consequence, if you know what I'm saying."

"Dusty gave me _instructions,_ " Ryan insisted. "Her eyes were hard and glittery."

The Starbucks Up The Street is the Enemy, possessed of sinuous, serpentine wiles and insidious prowess. No quarter must be given, and no quarter shall, at least on Ryan's watch. He hates that fucking store nearly as much as Dusty.

It's not that he hasn't patronised a Starbucks or two in his time. It's not that he doesn't remember the heady taste of a grande double-shot hazelnut chai cappuccino. But that was before the Starbucks Up The Street opened, and he saw firsthand the damage it did to the indie, the _countercultural_ sort of coffeehouse - now he has _principles_. He makes _sacrifices_. He drinks real coffee, black, unsweetened, and likes it.

(Tries to like it).

It's like David and Goliath. In his head, he's David; not Michelangelo's buff David with his washboard abs and straight nose, magnificent head and tight ass, but Donatello's David, slinky and elegant and slender, with awesome taste in hats and footwear, and totally able to fuck shit up.

-

He fights Spencer half-heartedly over the CD player – Spencer wants the Weakerthans, come the fuck on. Ryan's thinking more Antony And The Johnsons – she liked it, last time she came in – or maybe some Voxtrot, some Islands.

He yields to Spencer when Katie sends him a sad-eyed, dying-duck look of despairing tolerance, and the first track's barely begun to play when The Devotee wanders in.

The Devotee isn't an addict in the traditional sense, the Bert McCracken sense – everyone on campus knows Bert, it's pretty hard to avoid him. No, The Devotee is of another brand, a creature of another colour entirely.

"Espresso," he says vaguely, pushing his heavy sunglasses up on his nose. "No, Americano. Extra shot of caffeine, extra large."

"Coming right up," Ryan says. He's always polite to The Devotee. The guy practically keeps Al-Andalus in the black single-handedly.

The Devotee smiles back at him – a surprisingly sweet, broad smile, lighting up his whole face and displaying a large number of small white teeth.

"Hey, dude," Spencer says, leaning his elbows on the counter. "How's it hanging?"

"Awesome," The Devotee says, with another brilliant smile. His eyes flicker past Spencer's shoulders, over to the coffee machine where Ryan is toiling. He jerks them back to Spencer's face – "It's a good day, right? Like, it's cold, but it's not, like, nasty cold, and the sky's mostly clear, and."

His gaze skitters back to the coffee machine, then follows the cardboard cup of coffee Ryan's cradling as it makes its slow progress from far benchtop to distant counter, gaining a plastic lid along its way.

When The Devotee reaches out to take his cup, his fingers are smudged with crimson and blue, deep purple and black. He nods his head at them jerkily, long dark hair falling into his eyes. "Thanks, dudes. Keep it real."

"See you later, man," Spencer says, and Ryan echoes, "Take care."

They both know he'll be back today. Probably even during the remainder of their shift. Sometimes it's two cups of coffee a day, sometimes three, sometimes more.

(Once, it was eight, and Ryan won the betting pool. That was a pretty awesome day. Once, it was only the one, and Greta fretted all afternoon that The Devotee might have been hit by a car, taken suddenly with malaria, kidnapped by the Mafia, or otherwise been sinisterly detained.

Spencer campaigned hotly for The Devotee to be nicknamed The Caffiemaniac or The Caffienator instead, but was outvoted on the grounds of cumbersomeness and also general lameness.)

Ryan's wiping down the bench when the next customer comes in, and only looks up when Spencer clears his throat.

"Hi," she says, her voice rough like whiskey, bright and enthusiastic. Her striped stockings are ripped over the knees, and her t-shirt says _this is a chord, this is another, this is a third, now form a band_ , and her black boots with their buckles and blocky, sinister soles go halfway up her calves and look like they mean Business with a capital B. She's wearing more eyeliner than he is, and Ryan is kind of maybe sort of possibly just a little tiny bit in love with her.

("Not, like, actually," he tried to explain to Greta once when she was _tutting_ at him, Al-Andalus deserted during the late shift. He was sprawled out on the floor in glorious contempt of professionalism, Greta's head pillowed on his stomach. "It's more – she knows who Sartre is, you know? Like a mindcrush. It's just - she likes the Beatles. She talks about artistic integrity and The Clash and Ginsberg, and samyak-saṃkalpa –"

His long fingers clutched at the empty air, waving, weaving, trying to explain.

"Calf love," Greta said clinically, and patted his knee kindly. "It happens to all of us, baby."

"She's just so –"

"So a decade older and smarter than you. Yeah."

"So cool," Ryan finished helplessly, flicking her cheek. Close up, Greta's skin is fine and fair, faintly dusted with tiny golden freckles.)

"Hi, Amanda," he says casually, while behind him he knows Spencer and Katie are _looking_ at each other and maybe rolling their eyes, because everyone he works with is actually an asshole.

She looks up and smiles. She smells like musk and cigarette ash and something lighter and sweeter, altogether, and it's a warm smile that reaches her eyes.

"Hey there, little buddy," she says. "Espresso, thanks."

Even her taste in coffee is above reproach.

"I'll get it," Spencer offers, bustling about, while Ryan stands there awkwardly.

"Read anything good lately?" he asks, because sometimes she recommends books to him and sometimes they're deeply, deeply weird (he's still a little mindfucked by The Wasp Factory, but the discomfort and the feeling at the end like someone reached into your skull and grabbed a chunk of your cerebral cortex in their fist, that's probably how you know it's literature), but nearly all of them are also really, really awesome, even if he wouldn't have picked a lot of them out himself.

"Hmm?" she says, looking up from her phone. "No, not this weekend, Ry. I had a ton of grading to do."

"Right," Ryan says. "Sure, right."

"What about you? You're young and wild and free, how was your weekend?"

"Uh. Pretty slow." Ryan sticks his hands in his pockets, but she's looking at him encouragingly. "I was at the Harlequin last night, there were a couple of college bands playing. Knucklebones and, uh, International Goethic. Knucklebones were really good, they had this crazy little guitarist who was just, really into it, he _shredded._ "

"Yeah?" She smiles. "Meet any pretty girls? Guys?"

He thinks of the guy he did meet, his full lower lip and the way he held his shoulders like he was a little uncomfortable in his own skin, always moving throughout the set, foot tapping, hip jiggling, eyes moving backwards and forth. His jeans were skin-tight, _literally_ , and when Ryan got him back to his tiny dorm room – thank god, Spencer had been out somewhere – it was really fucking hard to peel him out of them, even with his enthusiastic co-operation. They'd gotten them pushed down his thighs, finally, Ryan urging him on as the guy lifted his hips and tugged, biting his lip, and it probably would've been a hell of a lot easier if they'd stopped kissing, but Ryan hadn't wanted to pull away and neither had the guy, and the whole time they'd been wrestling with the jeans Ryan had been getting his own off, sliding his hands up under the guy's shirt, letting the guy push his head back so that he could mouth Ryan's throat, and –

"No," he says. "You know I'm unswervingly devoted to you. My love's pure and true and an ever-fixed mark, et cetera, you know."

She laughs, because his protestations of adoration are an old joke, no harm, no foul, so long as everyone's suitably ironic. "I always love how all these people use that sonnet at weddings and shit, and none of them have any idea that it was written about another man. It's awesome, it's like, stealth fucking things up."

"Here you go," Spencer says, passing her the coffee. "Have a good day, please come again."

-

His creative writing class after his shift's over is interminably, unforgivably boring, and the professor gets bogged down explaining synecdoche and metonymy.

Ryan plugs the mic into his iPod and records the lecture under the desk, just in case he wants to have been paying attention later. He draws showers of stars and twisted trees and flights of ravens across his pad of paper, and from the lectern, it probably looks like he's paying rapt attention.

-

The Western Civ class he has with Spencer after is more interesting, which is probably wrong. He should be more interested in the classes pertaining to his major, not his required classes. Not that he likes his Science requirement one little bit, so the world's still the right way up.

 _Hey_ , Spencer scrawls on the edge of his notes. _I'm bored._

 _You're a barbarian economics major_ , Ryan writes back. _Duh. No hypotenuses in this._

 _Hypotenuses aren't_ – Spencer rolls his eyes at him and doesn't finish rising to Ryan's bait.  
 _  
Whatever. Where were you last night?  
_  
Spencer pauses before writing back, _studying._

 _Long and hard all night long?_

 _You know it._

Ryan draws a series of fat little cartoon hearts all along the edge of the paper, then draws a rather lopsided and anaemic bare-assed cupid, pulling back its bow. Then he adds more hearts, for good measure.

After that, Spencer balls up the piece of paper and drops it down between them (still being weirdly uncommunicative), and starts looking like he's genuinely interested in Renaissance court patronage. Ryan tries poking him in the arm with his pen, but all that does is leave little blue smears and white pressure points on Spencer's forearm.

-

When he goes to bed that night, he needs to change the sheets but he's too tired to bother. He falls asleep with his jeans still on, staring at The Modest Mouse and Counting Crows posters on their walls, the crumpled setlist from a The Faint gig lovingly taped up next to the mirror, listening to the distant gurgles of Spencer in the bathroom, cleaning his teeth.

His sheets still smell like sex, like himself and that other guy, and he wakes up hard.

-

"I thought you had an English lecture first this morning," Spencer says, confused.

"I do."

"I thought your lecture was over by the politics buildings."

"It is."

"Then why are we here?"

"You know way too much about my schedule, man, it's kind of creepy," Ryan says, and doesn't answer.

'Here' is the shadowed doorway of a store across the road from the Starbucks. After a few seconds, Spencer works this out.

"Are you spying on the clientele?"

"No."

"You know they're allowed to go there as well if they want to."

"Of course they are."

"The spying would probably work better if we went inside."

"I'm not setting foot on enemy soil," Ryan says tonelessly, squinting into the wind. "Also, I think infiltration would be counter-productive. We could be assimilated."

"You know, I can't tell if you're being serious right now or just being really, really sardonic."

Ryan can't help grinning at that, although it means surrendering his mystique. "Really? Awesome." He's cunning like the mongoose. When Spencer sends him a long-suffering look, he waves his hand graciously and says "You can go in, if you want. I'll stay out here and hold the base. Go on, reconnoitre."

"This is way too much like our childhood," Spencer says, but he hands Ryan his messenger bag (the fucker is _heavy_ , Spencer must have his laptop crammed in there). "I think I'm getting flashbacks. 'Spencer, you light the fuse while I stand over here behind this wall. Spencer, you distract the dog while I climb the fence. Spencer, you…"

His voice trails off into the distance as he crosses the road.

When he comes back (quarter of an hour later, seriously), he's clutching a very large cup of coffee, pink-cheeked. Ryan is very cold.

"What the fuck, you didn't get me anything?"

Spencer eyes him, smoothing down his lavender t-shirt. Ryan can't make out what's screen-printed on it, but it's silvery and probably nth-degrees of ironically awesome/awful. "I didn't think you'd want anything."

"You took a long time," Ryan says. "Well?"

"One of the baristas there's called Jon." Spencer takes a thoughtful sip of coffee. "He's a film student. He has a cat. He gave me a cinnamon roll, on the house. I've met him before, he's pretty cool."

"That's not – that's not useful information," Ryan says helplessly. He is mad with fury. Also, he's really cold. He shoves Spencer's bag back at him. "Your shirt has _lesbian unicorns making out_ on it, what the fuck."

-

He has an English class – Postmodernism and The Wasteland - first that morning. He's late (fucking Spencer and his useless intelligence-gathering), and the professor pointedly pauses mid-sentence and waits for him to stumble down the steps and slide along the row next to Greta and Darren. He feels clumsy and self-conscious and he stumbles over his own feet getting there.

Greta eyes him charily out of the corner of her eye, once the professor picks up the threads of the lecture and continues. "You could have just sat at the back," she whispers.

"You know I had to be near you," Ryan whispers back, "little helpless moth, big burning flame," and she's smiling again when she smacks his knuckles with her pen.

He keeps his head down, virtuously making notes, so it takes him about ten minutes to notice that sitting beyond Greta, beyond Darren, is Greta's new friend Chris.

"Hey," he says when the lecture's over, smiling at Chris, "hi, nice meeting you again," and Greta stands hard on his foot and makes significant little eye-flicks in Darren's direction.

-

"If you mess things up," Greta says sweetly and softly, "I will end you. I will disembowel you with a teaspoon."

Ryan holds up his hands, palms out, in surrender. Then, because this isn't quite enough, he circles around the narrow serving-space and puts Spencer solidly between them. Katie and Dusty aren't around to mediate, because on Tuesday afternoon shifts, they both have the afternoon off while the three of them have the coffeehouse to themselves. It is a sacred trust.

"Um," Spencer says, as Ryan crouches down behind him, long fingers hard on his hips as he strikes a wobbly balance and leans out past Spencer to stare at Greta.

"Look," Ryan says, "I wasn't flirting. I was saying hi. I didn't know Darren liked him like that. I didn't even know Darren knew him." Drawing desperate breath, he says plaintively, "I didn't even know Chris was in that lecture! Since when does he take that class?"

"Excuse me," someone says uncertainly. "Hi? Can I get a soy macchiato?"

Ryan, Spencer and Greta freeze _en tableau_ , Greta still holding the teaspoon, Ryan crouched down on the floor, hands on Spencer's hips, using him as a human shield. From the speakers, Mogwai is playing.

Slowly, Ryan straightens up, smoothes his apron, and turns around, smiling professionally.

"Erghk," he says, instead of 'hi, sure, that'll be four-twenty.' "Fuck."

"Ryan," Spencer hisses, and Greta's spoon jabs him in the ribs.

The guy at the counter bites his lip and says "Um. Hi, Ryan. I didn't know you worked here, uh."

"Yeah, I didn't exactly give you my business card," Ryan agrees (Greta jabs him in the ribs again) and stares awkwardly at the other night's pick-up.

He's wearing a pink t-shirt and a pair of red-framed glasses and he's still biting his lip awkwardly, and he looks normal, bag slung over his shoulder, normal and both nothing and exactly like how he looks naked. He looks as awkward and uncomfortable as Ryan feels, shifting his weight from one foot to another, fiddling with one of the badges on his bag.

He smiles tentatively when he notices Ryan staring.

"So, um." Ryan carefully does not look at either Greta or Spencer. "What was that you wanted, Benton?"

 _"Brendon,_ " the guy – Brendon – says, and the small smile fades. "Uh, a soy macchiato, please. Large."

"Okay," Ryan says. "Did you want that to go?" At Brendon's nod, he hands Greta the paper cup and waves vaguely in the direction of the machine. At his side, Spencer nods at Brendon, and Brendon nods back.

"This is a nice place," Brendon says, looking around Al-Andalus. One wall had been painted by Katie's artist ex-girlfriend, Lindsey, picked out in intricate, jewel-coloured geometric designs; another was monochrome (save for the splashes of scarlet), and The Devotee had painted it with vampires and zombies and tiny, fragile ballerinas. Painted on the wall behind the counter was a large head-and-shoulders portrait of Audrey Hepburn, black and white against deep blue.

"I don't normally come here for my coffee, I go to the Starbucks up the road, but. This is nice." Brendon swallowed. "Good music."

"That'll be four-twenty," Ryan says, taking the coffee from Greta and shoving it gracelessly at him. "It's extra for the soy."

-

After Brendon leaves (he stands there awkwardly for a few seconds first, clutching his coffee to his chest, toeing the ground like he wants to ask something, before apparently thinking better of it), Ryan watches the door tinkle closed.

"Hardly know him," he says, before either of them have time to say anything. "Passing acquaintance."

"That's funny," Spencer says, tapping his fingers against the counter, "because he looked just like the guy I found in our shower yesterday morning."

"Maybe he's a stalker," Ryan says hopefully. "A weird, twisted nudist stalker with a weird, twisted shower fetish."

Greta and Spencer don't even bother to respond to that; they just trade weary looks, and Ryan says defensively "Well, what were you even doing home then? You should have been at work."

"I told you, I came home to change before my shift," Spencer says, evasively. "After all that studying."

"All that… _studying_ ," Ryan says, but Spencer's much better at conversational deflection than he is.

"I found him in the shower, said hello, escorted him out once he was done. We have to talk about letting strangers roam freely around our dorm, Ryan."

"I'm older than you. Lecture me," Ryan threatens, "and I'll commit seppuku on Greta's spoon. I promise you, I'll do it."

"I think I know him," Greta says thoughtfully, tapping the spoon lightly against her chin. "I think we have the same musical theory class together."

"No," Ryan says. "No, you don't."

-

For his creative writing class the next day, Ryan has to write about a couple arguing in a thunderstorm, without using any superlatives, adjectives, or adverbs. His professor is totally a sadist.

He's complaining volubly to Katie ("Seriously, what the fuck, he might as well want me to cut off my legs and arms while I'm at it. Or to trepan my own skull with a meat skewer. I mean, what –" ) when the door opens.

He gets a hint of warning, a flicker out of the corner of his eye - dark hair and a grey coat, bright glasses – and vanishes like a diving duck, stooping down behind the counter.

"Hey," Spencer calls out. The miserable traitor. "Brendon, right?"

"Right."

"Can I get you anything?"

"Um, a macchiato? Soy." A pause. "Is Ryan on today?"

Ryan punches Spencer in the leg warningly, silent. He grinds his knuckles into his calf, just to punctuate it.

"Sure," Spencer says easily. "He's hiding behind the counter."

Spencer is a weak and broken reed, as well as a miserable, two-faced traitor.

"Really?" Brendon sounds both curious and a little disappointed, and Ryan gives Spencer's leg one more swift punch and scrambles to his feet, brushing dust off the knees of his jeans.

"I just, uh. I dropped something."

"Oh," Brendon says. "Right."

"What did you drop?" Spencer asks, looking at Ryan's empty hands, and Ryan makes a tiny mental note to wake him up with a glass of cold water tomorrow.

Ryan looks at Brendon. "A pen," he says limply. "I think it rolled away somewhere, though."

"Oh," Brendon says again. "Yeah, that can happen." His hands are in his pockets, and as Ryan watches, he licks his lips nervously. "Hi."

"Hi," Ryan says, tugging on his apron, and behind him he can hear Dusty laughing as she serves someone else.

"This is a really awesome place," Brendon says, leaning on the counter. "I mean, seriously. It's got ambiance, you know?" He tilts his head for a second, listening, then grins impossibly wide. "Fuck, is that Oh No Oh My?"

"Yeah," Ryan says, and _dammit_. He's hot, and he was a good fuck, and while he apparently patronises Starbucks, his taste in coffee isn't irredeemable, and, and, and, he has decent taste in music as well? It's like a conspiracy. In fact, Greta said –

"You're studying music, aren't you?" he says, then sort of wishes he could take it back.

Brendon brightens. "Yeah! Yeah, first year." He taps his fingers against the counter top, _dah-da-da-da-dah_ , and Ryan watches them, thinking _pianist's fingers,_ flexible, capable.

They are, if he remembers, pretty dexterous, and he's blushing, fuck, why is he blushing?

"That'll be four-twenty," Spencer says, stepping in.

"Right, yeah, just a sec." Brendon's wallet is tiny and it's clipped onto his beltloop; he has to squirm around to get it, the keys clipped to the same chain clinking softly against each other.

"So," Ryan says aimlessly. He pushes the macchiato in Brendon's direction.

"Thanks, man."

Ryan smiles back at him – he can't help it, the guy's smile is kind of contagious - and is still smiling when Brendon saunters out, wallet and keys swinging jauntily behind him.

-

He comes in on Thursday, too. Ryan is a smooth, well-oiled, barista _machine._ He is polite, he smiles (he doesn't try to duck under the counter). Seriously, he should get a raise for this level of professionalism; Katie's always wanting him to smile at the customers and to try and sound interested ("Come on, I know you have some enthusiasm in your voice, we just need to bring it out!") and to get their orders right and stuff.

Ryan has no idea how Brendon knew that he was working that afternoon rather than the morning, but after Brendon's gone, Greta bites her lip like she's trying not to smile. Beside her, Dusty has her arms crossed, and she's grinning too, hair slicked back behind her ears.

"He was in here already this morning," Greta says. She's wearing a pretty white dress, her hair in golden-brown waves down her back; sweet, innocent flower, Ryan's ass. "I think you have a gentleman admirer. That, or we're getting another Devotee. We should make them t-shirts or something."

"Shut up," Ryan says. "I'm being harassed in my place of work, you should be on my side."

She smiles at him, utterly and completely unperturbed, and Ryan glares.

"What price the milk of human kindness?"

"I've stopped taking milk in my tea," Greta muses, turning her eyes to the ceiling.

It's cerulean blue and spangled with stars, like the ceilings of pre-Renaissance chapels, blue with lazuli from the East, the soft colour of the Virgin's cloak in old icons. Lindsey had painted it in July, up a stepladder and bending backwards at an improbable angle to reach the tricky spots; blue smeared all over her jeans and smudged across her bare arms, her face, laughing down at the guy holding the stepladder for her and talking about something incongruous – Batman. Huh, weird that Ryan can remember that.

-

Thursday night is Open Mic Night at Al-Andalus - or Poetry Night, or Entertainment Night, or Live Music (Bring Your Guitar!) Night. They run through a variety of names for it, and it really depends on what Spencer and Darren feel like when they're typing up the flyers. Usually they get a couple of people who're willing to embarrass themselves in public for the common weal; Thursday nights are always surprisingly busy, full of students. They come in noisy, chattering groups, in smaller, silent clutches; with piles of notes and heavy textbooks, or in heels and holding hands, trying to have Meaningful Conversation over the din.

Ryan's not actually pencilled in tonight, but Spencer is, so after his afternoon classes, after going back to his dorm to nap and to play a little Halo, he drops by.

You'd think that he'd never darken the door of Al-Andalus when he's not being paid for his presence, because it's not like he doesn't spend enough time there working as it is. And that's true, but he somehow keeps coming in, like a needle being drawn north, whenever he's passing anywhere nearby.

"Hey," Spencer says, scarlet apron already tied neatly around his waist. "Look sharp, I don't think we've got enough suckers on tonight, Dusty might shanghai you into going on."

"And doing what?" Ryan asks blankly.

Spencer shrugs. "I might have mentioned that you write poetry sometimes. A while ago, it wasn't on purpose."

"Shut the fuck up," Ryan hisses. "That's not poetry, that's my journal. My _private_ journal."

"Your private journal that you leave open on my desk?"

"Watch yourself," Ryan warns, "or I might tell Dusty that you can beatbox."

Nevertheless, he heeds Spencer's warning and finds himself a shadowy corner where he won't be seized upon by demon redheads.

There are a couple of people who can sing and play their instrument of choice, and mostly they're decent – nothing incredible, but mostly-on key, nothing like the gawky kid with the mane of curls who came in one Thursday and tried to accompany himself with a damp comb. His name was something weird, like Twisty, Sisko, something. It was probably secretly Alex; half the campus seems to be called Alex, sometimes. Anyway, the Comb Incident had been – special.

Then, after the first couple of mediocre no-hopers, there's a kid he hasn't seen before at Open Mic Night, although he comes in a couple of times a week and has quiet, passionate conversations about music with them.

(One time, he got so into it that he ended up hooking his own ipod up to the speakers and playing DJ for them all afternoon into the late shift, saying listen to this and flicking through tracks with a practiced thumb, full of information about each artist; he had good taste, so they let him play anything he wanted, even though a lot of his selections veered all over the genre map.)

Ryan can't really remember his name, although he probably told him it at some point. The guy sits there with a hat pulled low over his eyes and a guitar on his knee; he strums softly for a while – he's good, Ryan can tell, even over the roar of the crowd – and then when he starts to sing, surprisingly clear and true, the place goes quiet, hushed. He's so far above and beyond the usual suspects that Ryan puts a couple of dollars into his guitar case, with almost no pang at all at parting with cold cash.

(The guy looks up at him when he does that, out from under the hat, and his face is sweet and soft, skin fine and fair. He's not really Ryan's usual type – red hair, seriously – but his mouth is fucking gorgeous and he can sing _like that_ , and Ryan thinks about it for a second, half-seriously.

Then he remembers that he hasn't gotten rid of the last guy he took home yet, and thinks better of it.)

Pete's up after him; anyone would probably suck coming on after that, but Pete's free-verse poetry, which he reads out to the coffeehouse every Thursday, with grandiloquent gestures and long, solemn pauses, doesn't _suck_ , exactly. Some of it's even actually good - some of it's very, very good – but most of it's, uh, well. Ryan's creative writing teacher would send it back covered in red ink for revision.

"Yo," one of their regulars says from a nearby table. "Ryan. Do you know what this café really needs?"

Ryan rolls his eyes. "Yeah, Joe, no. If you're going to suggest that we install a hookah, Miss Katie Kay already vetoed that one."

"It would add ambiance," Joe presses, stroking the wall, painted trompe d'oeil to resemble the Alhambra. Andy's sitting next to him, reading The Economist and looking dour, ignoring Pete's rehtorical flights. (Andy's another of their regulars; he comes in nearly every day, wearing hempen sandals and t-shirts with militant and/or eco-friendly slogans. He always adjusts his glasses, orders a soy flat white (after asking suspiciously after the brand of soy milk they use, and after their fair trade bona fides), and asks whoever's serving if he can put up some more flyers. When the person who's serving isn't Dusty, he tends to be perceptibly more brusque and to look strangely hangdog.)

Ryan's more interested in watching Spencer than talking with Joe, or listening to Pete. Spencer's standing over near the counter, arms crossed over his apron, hips tilted, and he's talking to a guy a little shorter than him, brown-haired and nonchalant and wearing, of all things, _flip-flops_. Talking properly, not just nodding and magnificently ignoring anything the customer might be saying; smiling, _laughing_ even, his face lit up and animated.

Ryan leaves before it gets too late; he's got a couple of early classes, and if he stays until closing he'll get dragooned into clearing up.

-

He's not really surprised when Brendon turns up on Friday; so unsurprised that he's been watching the door for a little while before Brendon actually comes in, hoodie drawn up over his head, earbuds in.

Ryan rolls his eyes. "Hi."

Brendon beams at him, but the earbuds are still in place, music sounding, and Ryan's pretty sure he can't hear him. "Macchiato, please. You know how I like it."

"You have a stupid face," Ryan tells him, and when that garners no reaction beyond another pleasant nod, he adds "But you have a really, really nice ass."

"Really?" Katie asks curiously over his shoulder. Her many necklaces clack against each other in punctuation, amber and turquoise and mother of pearl. "How nice are we talking?"

"Hmm." Ryan pauses. "Mmm. Really, _really_ nice."

"More working, less eyeing up the clientele like meat," Dusty says, then narrows her eyes speculatively at Brendon. "Yeah, I can see it."

"I opened the bathroom door and found it in the shower," Spencer volunteers. "I won't say my world was rocked, but it was. You know."

Brendon removes the earbuds then, and Katie puts her hand over her mouth, dark eyes wide and shocked and just a little bit evil, a little girl who's been caught out in a misdeed. Dusty just hooks her thumbs casually through her beltloops. They exchange warm, mysterious glances.

"This place is definitely growing on me," Brendon says obliviously, looking around. "Coffee and good music and no link to evil megacorps. I think I could really get used to it."

"It's fair trade coffee," Katie says, dimpling, as she hands him his macchiato. "No major label music."

"Of course it is," Ryan says flatly, and stares at her until she drags Dusty away. Then he turns his gaze on Spencer, who stares back and doesn't move away until Ryan flares his nostrils at him. For some reason, that always works.

"You judge us all by our taste in music and choice of drinks, don't you?" Brendon asks, wrinkling his nose a little.

"Of course," Ryan says, surprised into truthfulness. "But, hey, it's not like - sometimes I judge people by their shoes and haircuts, too."

"Of course," Brendon agrees, taking a sip of coffee. The cup hides his mouth, but Ryan has a vague suspicion that he might be laughing at him. Ryan hates people laughing at him. He thinks about accidentally spilling hot coffee onto Brendon's lap, and feels soothed.

"True, he likes The Breeders, he thinks Green Day's pretty swell," Brendon muses, lower lip vanishing between his teeth. He hums the next line, _what about The Bartlebees and Neutral Milk Hotel?_ under his breath, and he's definitely laughing at him, but that was vintage Tullycraft, that was the indie snob's hallowed anthem, and Ryan kind of can't be too furious at him while he's still humming that.

Asshole.

"If you pass your cup back," Ryan says brusquely, "I'll top it up on the house."

"Really? That'd be really nice of you, man, thanks."

Ryan shrugs. "Whatever." He makes it in silence, then slides it across the counter, and all the time he can feel Brendon watching him.

"Thanks." Brendon smiles at him, and his whole face brightens with it, dark eyes glinting. It's a good grin, a real one; he tilts his head to one side, and when he reaches for the cup, he grabs Ryan's wrist instead.

Ryan looks down at the fingers encircling his wrist, then back at Brendon.

"I know I asked this before," Brendon says. "But, dude, can I have your number? Due warning, I'm going to give you mine either way."

"He thinks that's a great idea," Dusty calls. "You need a pen, honey?"

Brendon writes _Bden!_ with a Sharpie across the back of Ryan's limp hand, then a row of numbers. Ryan can feel himself going red, can feel Dusty and Spencer looking at him, and he keeps his eyes fixed firmly on the counter until Brendon finishes with a flourish.

He leans in and blows on the drying ink, his breath a sudden rush of warmth against Ryan's skin. Ryan looks up, startled, and Brendon grins at him, something bright and mischievous in his eyes.

"Do me, now, come on."

"Sure," he mumbles, and when Brendon hands him the pen, he writes his own number on the back of Brendon's hand. He's hot, sure, but Ryan still doesn't – he thinks about giving him a fake, but Spencer's watching with a benign interest in the proceedings.

"Awesome," Brendon says when he's done. "Awesome, dude, I'll call you."

 _"Well,"_ Spencer says, as the door shuts behind him.

Ryan covers the number protectively with his other hand, and glares. "Shut up."

-

Brendon texts him when he's in the library, virtuously trying to cram for the fucking Biology test he has on Tuesday. Required courses suck so much ass; he got his fill of this brand of torture back in high school, and it's mean, that's what it is, _mean,_ to force unwanted information on innocent, scholarly minds in college.

Ryan hasn't turned his phone off, but he also forgot to put it on silent; it buzzes loudly against his hip, vibrating to the loud, tinny strains of _Born To Be Wild._ He's not sure who he needs to put a hit out on for that – most likely Spencer, he had motive and opportunity, but Greta's a contender, and maybe Jac, too.

All around the hushed sanctum of the library's third floor, heads turn. Glances are icy and eyes frosty, and lips are pursed disapprovingly. Nearby, someone huffs in an offended fashion, while _Born To Be Wild_ plays on.

Ryan ignores them and flicks his phone open.  
 _  
u going to the harlequin tomorrow?_

 _some of us have to study,_ Ryan texts back. _maybe. anyone good playing?_

 _it matters?_

 _hahaha point.  
_  
-

Ryan chooses what he wears carefully. Not because of Brendon – he didn't even say he was going to be there for sure, _Ryan_ didn't say _he_ was going to be there for sure – but just – because. He finds a dashing black hat that he's ninety percent sure he stole from Katie (there's a paper flower tucked into the hatband; sadly, it's not a green carnation), and a diamond-patterned silk scarf, honey and umber. He has a tiepin somewhere, and he manages to mock up the scarf into a half decent ascot.

He can't find his gloves, but his tightest, skinniest jeans are clean; he finds his leather jacket in Spencer's closet, and takes his phone out in order to make a vital note.  
 _  
cold water. spencer's sleeping face. beautiful union. don't forget!!!  
_  
-

He's still kind of annoyed when he gets to The Harlequin and checks out the line-up. He saw Knucklebones last week, that's what prompted the whole Brendon thing, even if they are awesome. Maybe he's cursed. International Goethic were on then, too, although he didn't catch much of their set, too busy making out with Brendon at the back of the room. The only vaguely novel band listed is Soylopp Goloppa, which sounds faintly Finnish or Swedish or something. Maybe they're a Sigur Ros imitation band. That'd be – well, actually pretty cool, Ryan has to admit.

"Ryan Ross," someone says throatily close by his ear. "The last and littlest dandy, how quaint."

"Audrey," he says. "It takes guts to wear that shade of pink so close to your face. You couldn't have chosen better, it really brings out the sallow undertones in your skin."

When she tosses her head, he's nearly knocked out by a swinging earring.

"I told her," Jac says, sylph-like in a pale slip; on Greta, it'd look deceptively sweet and wholesome, but Jac looks like a ice maiden, colourless hair and pale skin, sharp and brittle and very delicate. "I said, go for the warmer pink, but no-"

Ryan kind of likes Jac and Audrey, in a fraught and difficult way, although he reserves the right to threaten to throw up when they're going through a particularly sweet and cooing relationship phase, and to eat popcorn when they're in one of their more frequent demolition phases, with the screaming bitchfights and the sleeping with inappropriate people for revenge sex. His friendship with them is sharp and barbed and based on mutual mocking, and it endures only because he's never taken them up on their offer of a threesome.

"Disaster at two o'clock," Audrey interrupts, tapping her fingernails against her martini glass, _rar-rar_ -rar- _rah_. Their heads swivel in unison, and as one being, the three of them pale and curl their nostrils.

"Fuck, look at the roots, they must be an inch long –"

"'The _bleach_ , and on top of it, the _green_ –"

"It doesn't even look like hair anymore," Audrey says, in fascinated disgust. "It looks almost like frayed plastic fibre, or. Something unholy."

Jac pats her shoulder. "Maybe it's fake? We can hope."

"With those roots?"

The first band on isn't even billed on the flyers, and doesn't seem to have a name; it consists of a thin, spindly guy in thick glasses shaking a tambourine listlessly while a dark haired girl with cat-eyed smoky eyeshadow and a gorgeous rack makes screeching noises on the bass and sings in a thick, treacly voice.

Jac purses her lips. "I'm going to give her a five out of ten. She gets a point for being hot, and for wearing that pinstriped minidress with those boots."

"You're way, way too generous." Audrey rolls her eyes. "I give _him_ a one. Can I give fractions of a point?"

Jac makes a little _hmph_ noise, considering - Ryan shrugs and says "You have to give them something. I guess," - and ultimately they give them an overall mark of three.

"That's being generous," Audrey says loudly. "I'm a very generous person."

Ryan sees Greta in the crowd over Jac's shoulder, and slips away while the unnamed band are still playing.

She's not alone; she's flanked by Chris and Darren and a red-haired guy (Ryan wrinkles his nose instinctively) who she introduces as Bob.

"Come here, for fuck's sake," Ryan says, exasperated, and helps Greta twist the soft ringlets off her neck and pin them in place properly, so that the pins aren't slipping out anymore. "You're looking dressy," he tells the curved back of her neck.

"I'm going onstage," Greta says, sounding a little muffled as she talks around the hairpins in her mouth. "Some people in one of my music tutorials have this band, and they needed someone to do something, and I said I would."

"Do what?" Ryan asks, and maybe plans to take incriminating photos and tack them up on the Al-Andalus noticeboard, but Greta refuses to tell him, even when he picks her up and twirls her around menacingly, her dress flaring out.

("Wow," Darren says, sounding impressed. Ryan likes Darren; he's pretty quiet in class and they made out once with no hard feelings or complications. "I always thought you were kind of on the weak side, you know. You're way stronger than you look, because honestly, you look kind of scrawny."

Ryan revises his opinion of Darren.)

She refuses to give details right up until she glances at her watch and says "I should go check on them now, no, I'm still not going to tell you," and disappears, pushing her way into the crowd.

Ryan drifts around after that; Brendon's not there, or at least, not there yet. Everyone knows that the first couple of bands generally suck (sometimes the entire line-up sucks, when it's all college bands, what can you do) so coming early's the exception on campus rather than the rule, except for the barflies. Ryan was stupid to get here this early. And it's not like they set it in stone or anything, Brendon might not come at all –

Ryan tells himself that Brendon's possible presence at The Harlequin has nothing at all to do with the fact that he's here. He sees Spencer briefly in the crowd, talking some guy. It looks like the same guy Ryan saw him talking to at Al-Andalus on Thursday; he starts making his way over to investigate (interrogate) when Spencer sees him coming, develops a sudden mien of incredible shiftiness, takes the guy's hand and vanishes into the crowd.

Ryan was so right to make that note about the ice water. So, so right.

He can see Pete from Poetry Night, and the guy with the hat who could sing really, amazingly well; Pete's talking with his hands, wildly gesticulating, and when Ryan gets close enough to eavesdrop, it turns out that Pete's trying to convince the other guy that they should go on at The Harlequin next week.

" _Think about it_ ," Pete says, eyes wide. "We'd be fucking awesome. I told you, I can help you with the lyrics -"

"Can you play anything?" the guy asks, adjusting his glasses. "Because that's kind of crucial."

"Bass," Pete says triumphantly, then ruins the effect by waving his hand and adding 'sort of.' "We find a drummer, maybe another guitar, and then dude, we are made. Think about it - my words, your voice – the world is ours!"

-

"Ross," Audrey says right into his ear, and he jumps. "We lost you for a while."

"That was a tactical evasion. Your perfume was starting to give me a headache."

" _Ryan,_ " Jac says reprovingly, smacking his arm.

Audrey looks contemptuous of them both. "I can handle myself, babe. Ross, is that a paper flower on your hat? Please tell me that's a paper flower on your hat, because that's mock material for the next _ten years."_

Ryan opens his mouth to impugn Audrey's collection of bling, but before he can start, Jac smacks his arm again and says "Who was that girl you were talking to?"

He blinks, distracted. "Greta. I work with her? We have an English class together."

"She's hot," Jac says musingly, her shiny pink lips forming a perfect circle as she takes a sip from her paper cup.

"She could use some work, but she has potential," Audrey allows grudgingly, and the two of them start trading slanted, significant looks.

" _No_ ," Ryan says vehemently. "As in, fuck, no. Don't go after Greta, she's not your type. She's sweet, and innocent, and." He pauses. "And possibly already in a troika with Katie or Dusty. Or Chris and Darren. I don't know, I don't keep track. The point is, no."

"Not Katie and Dusty, I don't think," someone says right behind him. "Katie's seeing someone."

Ryan twists his head around, and it's the Devotee, looking wide-eyed and a little overwhelmed by the crowd. Ryan barely recognises him without a coffee cup in his hand.

"That's creepy. Also rude," Ryan tells him conversationally.

" _Ross_ is the rude one," Audrey informs the Devotee, summoning up a sympathetic look. "I don't know why I tolerate his company, or his reek."

"I do not reek," Ryan hisses. "I smell good, I smell like vanilla."

The Devotee eyes them all a little warily.

"What's your name?" Jac asks. "Ryan, what's his name?"

"How should I know?"

The Devotee looks a little taken aback. "I come into the store _every day._ Sometimes more than once."

"Ryan's not very observant," Audrey says, saccharine-sweet, and Jac blinks, looking puzzled.

"You go to that dump every day? Multiple times? On _purpose_?"

Ryan's feeling a little guilty, the way the Devotee is frowning confusedly at him ("My name's Gerard," he says plaintively), so he decides to change the subject. "Eavesdropping is kind of rude."

"I was just behind you, and I heard, and." He waves his hand like that explains his weirdness. "Anyway, Katie's seeing someone."

"Is she back with Lindsey?" Ryan asks, diverted. "I liked her."

The Devot- _Gerard_ shakes his head. "No, Lindsey's seeing that Drama TA –"

"Dramaturge," Ryan corrects, like he already knows what's coming next.

"Whatever. What's her name?"

"Amanda," Jac says, turning her eyes on Ryan. "La belle dame sans merci."

"Oh," Ryan says tonelessly. "I didn't know that."

"You are so bad at names, man," Gerard says obliviously. "You talk to her, like, all the time. I think I'm going to not take it real personal anymore that you don't know mine."

Ryan feels a little hollow, like he forgot to eat lunch again or something, and Brendon still isn't here, and Jac's still watching him carefully. He decides to change the subject again. "You know Lindsey?"

Gerard squints at him. "Uh, yeah? She's like my best friend. We painted Al-Andalus together, you don't remember that?"

"I guess I wasn't paying attention," Ryan says honestly. "If you say so."

"I did the zombies," Gerard says. "She did, you know, the pretty bits. She dragged me here tonight, but I kind of lost her. I think she's in the bathroom. There's this guy, in one of the bands that's on later, Knucklebones – anyway, he told me he'd be playing, so I kind of wanted to come, but I didn't, but she made me." He nods decisively, then adds, almost proudly, "My brother was onstage before, but he didn't tell me to come. I don't think he thought I would. He's pretty good."

"Your _brother_?" Audrey asks, and Ryan stands, very carefully, on her foot. Then he looks carefully around the crowded floor, eyes narrowed, until he finds her.

"I think I see Lindsey over there, dude. You should go join her, because if the next band's anything like Knucklebones, you won't have much chance once everyone starts rocking out."

Gerard's gone before Audrey and Jac can start to loudly dissect the tambourine-wielder.

-

The second band is nothing like Knucklebones. Knucklebones is punk, occasionally verging on screamo, and Soylopp Goloppa is – not.

Soylopp Goloppa is also not a Sigur Ros imitation band.

"This band is a total mess," Jac says, sounding awed, and Ryan has to agree. A fucking _ridiculous_ total fucking mess. Audrey doesn't say anything; she seems overwhelmed at the banquet of mockery spread before her.

Because, well. There's the comb-player Ryan remembers from a Thursday, holding the comb up to the microphone and plucking solemnly away at it, shaking out his curls; he's expanded his repertoire, and also uses lulls in the rhythm section as solo spotlights for his chiming waterglasses.

There isn't a drummer, per se; there _is_ a dude with a bristling beard and vivid tattoos, wearing only very small pink shorts, banging gamely away at a set of bongos.

The frontman is very tall and very thin and he has a large picture of Justin Timberlake hanging around his neck; he keeps making weird contortions with his hands and telling the crowd to feel the cobra. Ryan suspects that he's stoned out of his mind.

Then – and this is what pains Ryan deep in his soul – there's Greta, sitting on the edge of the stage with her legs swinging and armed with several bottles of bubble mixture and a bubble wand, whose mysterious task seems to involve blowing iridescent bubbles out into the crowd. She keeps looking over at the frontman and biting her lip on a smile, in a way that arouses Ryan's deepest suspicions.

The iron really enters his soul when he sees the keytarist. The keytarist is hot. The keytarist is shaking his hips and beaming all over his stupid face. The keytarist is wearing jeans that are painted on, sparkling silver sneakers, and a t-shirt that says _my other keytar is a porshe!_ ' However, most importantly, dwarfing all of these other, lesser, factors, the keytarist is _Brendon_ , and Ryan has to close his eyes in humiliation.

He continues to wince throughout the set; it doesn't get better, it seems only to get worse, and after a few stunned minutes, Jac and Audrey find their voices and start up their commentary.

Even that falters when another girl comes on, wearing a very brief dress, another keytar, and carrying a very small dog. She and Brendon keytar-duel, legs wide and head-banging, _beaming_ , while the very small dog runs around the stage barking loudly and weaving between everyone's legs. The curly-haired comb-player starts playing a tin whistle, which makes the dog bark competitively, and Audrey puts her head down and starts making little panting noises, too far gone to laugh properly.

The very small dog's entrance is when Ryan makes a expedient exit through the crowd, finding himself a spot in the shadows along the back wall. He's not really – he's not really interested in listening to Jac and Audrey mock them anymore.

The crowd maintains a deathly, bewildered silence throughout their first song, but by the second – and the entrance of the dog – there's cheering and laughter and cellphones in the air ( _recording this for youtube_ , Ryan thinks dourly. _Funniest video of the month)_. When the singer puts a very large disco ball on his head like a hat (conveniently hollowed to perch there firmly) and the very small dog starts humping Brendon's leg, the crowd is not only eating out of their hands, it's theirs forever.

-

When they wrap up their set, Ryan can hear Pete loudly over the crowd noise, still working on that guy. "Come on, we would be _way_ better than them!"

-

After that, International Goethic is kind of a let-down. Ryan vaguely recognises the singer as the guy who tried to order a venti early in the week, which doesn't endear the band to Ryan much. He's rolling his eyes and telling himself that he looks way, way better than that guy when Brendon finds him, looking flushed and damp and grinning all over his stupid _face._

"Hey!" he says, looking delighted, sliding an arm around Ryan's waist. "You came! Did you see me?"

"Yeah," Ryan says. "You were really, uh. Really vibrant."

The International Goethic singer says wearily into the mike "You hardcore people can stop looking so excited, this soft-rock band is named for the fifteenth-century _artistic movement,_ okay? With a pun on Goethe, the German writer guy? Nothing to do with skulls and bats."

"William's an art history major," Brendon says confidingly, right into his ear. "His life is very hard."

Ryan tries not to laugh at that, but seriously, he'd have to be made of stone not to find that funny. Brendon laughs softly too, against his shoulder.

"I like your hat," he says, fingering the brim. "Especially the flower, dude, that's awesome."

Ryan doesn't know what to say to that. "You were all – I really liked your band," he says weakly, because the compliment to his hat seems to call for a sacrifice of equal value. "It was very entertaining."

"Thanks," Brendon says, and his teeth flash white. "I mean, we were awful, I know - sometimes we do stupid things for fun, you know? - but that's really cool of you to say that. Does that make you my groupie? I always wanted a groupie."

"Fuck you, I'm no one's groupie." Ryan lifts his chin. "Except maybe Conor Oberst's."

Brendon looks suddenly tragic. "That's a shame," he says sadly. "I could really use a groupie. For make outs. Boy or girl, I'm not picky. Well, I am, but not when it comes to making out." He turns his huge, liquid dark eyes on Ryan. "Could I _pretend_ you were a groupie?"

"I-" Ryan starts, at a loss for words. Brendon's way too good at doing that to him. "Yeah, I guess?"

"Awesome," Brendon says, dropping the tragic mask abruptly. "Come here, dude, you need to be turned this way for the makeouts."

"Maybe I want to watch the band," Ryan suggests, just to be difficult.

"Making out with me is way more fun than that," Brendon says. "Hitting yourself in the head with a mallet – okay, maybe not a mallet, I'm not that mean, but a stuffed toy, maybe – is way more fun than that."

"Point," Ryan admits, and kisses him first, roughly; their mouths don't line up quite right in the beginning, off-center, and he has to crane his head at an awkward angle to fix that, but then it's suddenly way, way better, slick and hot and sliding back and forth between them, and Ryan gets a hand fisted in Brendon's stupid keytar t-shirt and pulls him in closer.

Brendon makes a pleased sound at that; one of his hands finds Ryan's hip, while the other comes up to grab his arm. He's definitely one of the most enthusiastic people Ryan's ever made out with – the lips are not false advertising, not at all - and he'd almost forgotten how much fun this could be, everything else aside; not as a prelude to hooking up, or to prove something, but for its own stupid, awesome sake.

"We're totally those assholes who hang at the back of concerts and make out obnoxiously," Brendon says a little later, sounding delighted at this realization. "This is totally what we did last week, to the same band!"

"Maybe it can be our thing," Ryan suggests dryly, and rolls his head back on his neck a little bit when Brendon slides his thigh in between his legs, pressing against his cock. "Oh, _fuck_ yeah."

"It would be a fun thing to have as a thing," Brendon muses, mouth hot on Ryan's throat. "Makeouts are never ever ever bad."

"They are when the person you're making out with won't stop talking," Ryan says, and Brendon says, with that same note of delighted discovery, "Point to you!" and applies his tongue enthusiastically to remedying that.

-

They make out all through International Goethic's set, but it seems kind of disrespectful to do that through Knucklebones'. Knucklebones are, well, actually good, if a little loud and hardcore for Ryan's taste, so when Brendon licks his ear and suggests that they take the party to the bathrooms, he almost – _almost_ – feels a pang at having to leave.

He does see The Devot- _Gerard_ in the crowd when Brendon's dragging him out, though, staring fixedly, longingly, at the tiny, totally insane guitarist throwing himself around the stage and headbanging wildly.

Ryan feels weirdly beneficent right this second, so he thinks about taking a detour across the floor and telling Gerard to just go _talk_ to him after, or something. If the guy told him to come, he was probably interested – well, that, or trying to drum up a crowd.

Brendon's whispering _dude, come on, bathrooms, I want to stick my hands inside your pants_ in a hot rush against his ear, so Ryan dismisses the brief impulse. It's not like the dude has any social skills, he doesn't want to set the guy up for disappointment.

Also, bathrooms.

-

When they push open the door, Ryan's first reaction is disappointment; someone else is already in the bathroom.

His second, voiced reaction is "Fuck, _fuck_ , I'm not supposed to be fucking seeing this, ever-"

His third, following closely on the heels of the second, is "Dude, I love you like a brother, but sitting on the counter of a public restroom is fucking tacky. At least find a _stall_ that _locks._ "

Spencer says "Then fucking don't look! And nobody's naked, or partly naked, don't be such a fucking drama queen."

Spencer says "Tacky? Is that your hand on Brendon's ass I'm seeing, or what?"

("It's a nice ass," Brendon says, sounding wounded.

"I know," Spencer says wearily. "The coven has already passed judgment on it."

"What?!")

"Who's the guy?" Ryan asks, as his gaze shifts from Spencer to the tan, brown-haired guy who had lifted Spencer up onto the counter in the first place.

The guy waves offhandedly. "I'm Jon, hi."

Ryan turns to look at Spencer. The shifty look on Spencer's face confirms his darkest, direst suspicions. "Jon? Jon from Starbucks?"

Spencer says, "Shit."

Jon says, "Yeah. It's okay, lots of people like to hate the 'Bucks. It's cool."

Brendon says, "Hi. I'm Brendon. Are we all introduced now?"

Ryan looks at Spencer, and Spencer looks back. "I knew you'd be a total pain in the ass about this," Spencer complains. "That's why I didn't fucking tell you."

"I'm your best friend," Ryan says. "And you're a – a – _turncoat_. How long has this been going on?"

"You're my best friend," Spencer agrees calmly. "You're also a monomaniac with an unnatural hate-on."

Brendon opens his eyes wide. "Spencer, dude, I love the shirt. Are those unicorns tonguing? Are they _girl_ unicorns?"

"Fuck the shirt," Spencer says.

"We don't know they're lesbian unicorns," Jon muses, artlessly. "Just because they're both pretty. They could be bucking gender stereotypes. They could be really femme boy unicorns."

Brendon nods seriously. "That's true, that's definitely true."

Ryan glares at them both. So does Spencer.

"Fuck this," Ryan says. "We're going back to my dorm. Come on, Brendon."

Spencer looks mutinous. "You can't, Jon's roommate called shotgun on their room."

"Maybe you should have thought of that before you started fraternising with the enemy," Ryan suggests, and Brendon says "Whoa, dudes, guess what? I have a room too, isn't that awesome?"

-

Ryan's still pissed off by Spencer's perfidy when they get to Brendon's dorm, although his dick seems to have forgotten it already; it's right on track with where things were at after International Goethic, which probably has a lot to do with Brendon and the fact that he couldn't go two fucking paces without stopping to make out and/or grope on the way here. (Ryan may or may not be partly implicated in this, but he admits to nothing.)

Brendon's dorm room is a fucking _mess_ ; there are clothes all over the floor, the beds, the desks, the chairs.

 _"What,_ " Ryan says, staring blankly. He's not the world's tidiest person, but there are limits, and then there are _limits._

"Ignore it," Brendon says frantically, pushing clothes and books off one of the twin beds in a hurry. "Look, I can see the comforter, come on."

Ryan evades Brendon's attempts to pull him down, but it's mostly a token resistance, because he's still really fucking hard, despite the way things crunched under his feet when he picked his way across the floor. "Yeah, but you had to dig for it."

"I couldn't find my sneakers before, you see," Brendon says, stretching out along the bed. "I needed them for the gig. They're reflective, when the stage lights are on they fucking _glow_ , it's amazing."

Ryan's not Spencer, talking about shoes doesn't turn him on, but he shrugs off his jacket anyway, and lets Brendon pull him down.

A short while in, his hat falls off, and he stabs himself in the finger with his tiepin trying to get his scarf off.

"You wear way too fucking many clothes," Brendon pants, sliding his hands into the waistband of Ryan's jeans.

"I fucking know," Ryan grinds out, hips straining up to help Brendon peel off his jeans, and then back down like they're drawn by magnetic fluid, against Brendon's. Brendon, the asshole, is already down to his jeans, and while they take a little easing to get off – how does he still have circulation in his thighs? How does he still have circulation in his _dick_? – once they're off, fuck.

"Lay back flat," he orders Brendon, then leans on his elbows over him, setting the pace, every smooth-slick-shuddery roll of hips against each other, their cocks hard between their stomachs and making Ryan groan and bite his lip every time they press together.

Brendon gasps back, his eyes squeezed shut, and when he cranes his neck up towards Ryan, they don't kiss so much as press their mouths half-together and breathe, hot and fierce. The heated curve of Brendon's neck and the slide of his collarbone taste salt-sharp with sweat, and Ryan licks his lips. "You got any stuff?"

He's got a condom, at least, in his jeans, but they're all the way across the other side of the room and he doesn't want to get up, doesn't want to stop. He could come just like this – fuck, he could come like this really fucking _easily_ , and _soon_ , but he doesn't really want to, and at the suggestion Brendon shudders and makes a soft sound deep in his throat which suggests that he doesn't really want to either.

"Nightstand," he mutters, "duh," and Ryan bites his shoulder before he leans back, sitting up, and starts going through Brendon's nightstand. He finds what he's looking for pretty quickly, and he's squeezing lube into his palm before he thinks to look over at Brendon and ask, "Wait, you're good with being –"

" _Yes_ ," Brendon says slowly, like he's addressing a small idiot child. "Yes, I'm down with it, I'm totally, utterly, completely down with it, I could make _t-shirts_ , hurry the fuck up."

Ryan doesn't like being rushed, so he rolls his eyes - "Shut up, for fuck's sake," – then leans in to kiss him slow and taunting and dirty, tongue flickering, and then slower and longer still, until Brendon's breathless and almost keening.

.

-

Ryan really doesn't want to get up, but the alarm keeps going off; it sounds weird and strange, not quite right, but it cuts through his dreams like a hot knife through butter.

 

"Mmmph," he moans, reaching out blindly, groping for it on the bedside table. It's too far away, the wrong angle, something – and then something falls off the table to the floor with a loud and thunderous clap, and his head feels a little less like fog and rather more awake.

" _Dude,_ " someone says in awed tones, "dude, I think you killed my clock. You totally slayed it, wow."

"Urgkhhh," Ryan manages, and opens his eyes. Brendon's pink in the face and biting his lip, like he's trying not to laugh. "Um. Fuck, sorry."

Brendon snorts, hauling himself up on his elbows and squinting over the side of the bed (Ryan turns his head to look, too, and winces at the sight; Brendon's clock was once a retro, round-faced affair in lime green, standing on little metal legs, with an old-fashioned bell at the top; now, its face is sundered from its body and its tiny bits of metallic entrails are spilled out on the floor). "Don't worry about it, seriously. I got it from a dime store."

"Right," Ryan says, a little inadequately, as Brendon leans in and nuzzles his shoulder. "Sorry, okay, right – dude, are you sucking my ear?"

"Earlobe," Brendon says, "and yes. It doesn't sound right if you just say 'ear'. Like, like I'm a weird creepy ear-fetishist. Which I'm not. Lobes only, swear to god – not that I fetishize the lobes, you know, it's just. Fun."

"You are so fucking weird," Ryan says, but he tilts his head and gives Brendon more scope, closing his eyes as he starts in on his neck. It would take every iota of energy in his body to get up and leave this bed, even to push back the covers - and he has no intention doing something as stupid as that; his muscles are pleasantly tired, his limbs heavy, and he feels kind of boneless, warm through to his marrow.

"Hey," he says, "come here," and steadies Brendon's jaw until they're kissing, closed-mouthed, a messy press of lips. Brendon's humming something jaunty, and that's when Ryan remembers that it's Monday-fucking-morning. Again.

 _Then_ he remembers that he extorted the morning off from Katie, in one of her weaker moments, and feels virtuous and a trifle smug and, overall, decidedly happier about things.

"We have to get up," Brendon says then, into his ear; he says it like he wants to be persuaded otherwise, in a sad, reluctant sort of voice, so Ryan kisses him again and grinds against his hip in very persuasive fashion.

"No, really –" Brendon continues unconvincingly, as his hands curl tight on Ryan's hips and he grinds back, "we really, uh, we really, we should, we do."

"I'm not stopping you," Ryan points out, and licks just under Brendon's jaw, blowing on the damp skin to watch him shiver.

"I mean it," Brendon says, sliding one hand slowly along Ryan's thigh. Then the iron enters into his voice, and he says, more firmly, "I've got classes, dude, come on. I'm going to need so, so much coffee to make it through them, I'm totally going to fall asleep in my Baroque Composition class, and my teacher already fucking hates me, I know he does." He strokes the arch of Ryan's hipbone with his thumb coaxingly. "If we get up now, we can grab breakfast or coffee or something."

It's the magic word.

"Coffee," Ryan mumbles, and pushes back the covers.

-  
 _  
spencer smith you abominable traitor hows the lovenest of sin and fraternization_

 _you forgot 'and really hot sex'_

 _dont give me details of your perversion_

 _we did it on your bed :))_

 _im going to do it with bden on yours now dude. 2 can play that game_

 _am i invited to the wedding?_

 _you are no longer my blood-brother_

 _whatevr_

 _-_

He should feel kind of self-conscious about walking into Al-Andalus with Brendon's hand tucked into the back pocket of his jeans, wearing a clean black t-shirt stolen from Brendon's closet; _should_ (does, even), but it's worth it to see Katie's eyes open wide. Dusty nearly drops a cup, fumbling for it just as it starts to slip out of her grasp.

Greta wiggles her eyebrows at him over The Devotee's shoulder as she takes his order.

"Two Americanos to go," Gerard says, shifting his weight from one foot to the other a little nervously.

"What, are you chain-imbibing now?" Ryan asks when Greta turns away, shaking his head sadly. "Dude, don't drink alone."

"I'm not drinking alone," Gerard says with dignity, and then his mouth curls to one side in a shy, almost smug smile. "Frank and I, you know. Started talking, after the gig."

Ryan has no idea what to say to that, but Brendon leans in and says "Awesome, man, way to go," and holds up the hand not currently in Ryan's jeans for a high five.

Gerard looks at it blankly for a second, then smacks his hand against it with an audible crack. "Thanks," he says, smiling again, and shifts off.

"Ow," Brendon whimpers into Ryan's ear. "Ow, I don't think he's used to that, he hits hard. My whole hand stings."

"Well," Greta says when they take Gerard's place at the counter. The electric light behind her turns her curling hair into a bright, gilded nimbus. Her smile is beatific.

Ryan lifts his chin at her and says shortly "Double-shot skim cappuccino, hold the mocking."

"I wouldn't do that, Ryan," she says innocently, and dimples at Brendon. "Soy macchiato for you, right?"

"Right," Brendon says happily, and starts talking to her about harpsichords or something. Ryan's still half-flinching and on high alert when they collect their drinks and pastries, waiting for the _mot juste_ that fails to arrive.

"So," Brendon says when they find a table and they sink, side by side, into the velvety quagmire of the coffeehouse couch. He kicks Ryan's foot lightly.

"Hmm?" Ryan says, letting his eyes half-close. If his head lolls a little onto Brendon's shoulder, it's because he's really tired and the couch is really, really comfortable.

"Neutral Milk Hotel," Brendon says, listening.

"I know," Ryan agrees. "Ghost. I think there's a saw playing on this somewhere, but no harpsichords."

Brendon grins at him, and Ryan grins back; he lets Brendon grab his hand and twist their fingers together, even though it's kind of revoltingly cheesy, what the fuck. He doesn't think Greta can see them from here.

"So," Brendon says again. "You should know that I listen to Britney Spears without irony. I've been known to sing into my hairbrush, I cut my hair myself one time, and I think it was pretty sweet, although, you know, that wasn't everyone's opinion. Sometimes I eat froot loops in my socks and underwear while watching cartoons. Sometimes my underwear is pink. Sometimes it's _neon_ pink." He takes a sip of coffee, then pauses meditatively. "Sometimes my socks are, too."

"Why are you telling me this?" Ryan asks, pulling his hand away so he can curl his fingers around the warmth of his cardboard cup, genuinely confused. "Are you trying to put me off my breakfast, or something?"

Brendon shrugs. "It's stuff that probably shouldn't come as a horrible surprise later on," he says. "You need to know this stuff when you're dating."

Ryan clutches his coffee, white-knuckled, like it's his salvation. "Who said anything about dating?" His voice cracks a little.

"You don't want to hook up again?" Brendon asks. His eyebrows quirk a little, sceptical. "Oh, well."

"I'm good with that. I mean, I do."

"The thing is, I'm going to come here in every day for my daily caffeine now," Brendon says. "You can't get rid of me. You've seduced me away from the 'Bucks –"

Ryan feels a small, warm glow enter his heart at that.

"And maybe we could hang out sometimes, I mean," he continues. "Play some video games, catch a movie, get stuff to eat. Sustenance is always a good, right?" A pause. "Study together in the library, if you know what I mean." He wiggles his eyebrows, and Ryan thinks about dark stacks and distant, deserted shelving and stuck-up library patrons.

"I'd probably also be good with that, too," he admits quietly.

"Well, then, Ryan Ross," Brendon says. " _Well, then_. Plus, I have your number now, and I'm totally not afraid to use it."

"I knew you were a creepy stalker," Ryan says despairingly, but when Brendon kicks him under the table, he grins back, suddenly shy. "Okay, well."


End file.
